Friday, August 8, 2008

A Scary Phrase

"Pediatric cardiologist." Not as scary as pediatric oncologist, but still not something you want to take your child to.

Xander went to the pediatric cardiologist yesterday. Good news upfront: he's okay. We only went because at his last check-up the doctor thought she heard a heart murmur. I wasn't extremely worried because, as the doctor pointed out, if he had a serious heart problem, it would already have been detected. But she wanted the cardiologist to check it out.

I wasn't all that happy with listening to Hari talk about Xander's "bum ticker" for a month.

So he had a EKG and ultrasound. He definitely has a heart murmur but it's an "innocent" heart murmur. I guess that's some sort of technical term. He was pretty good at first but by the time we got to the ultrasound, he was pretty worked up, so they couldn't get a lot of good pictures. However, because it was "innocent" the doctor's response was wait till he's done with the terrible two's and come back for another ultrasound when he's 3. Since it can wait another 18 months, I feel pretty much at ease that it is no big deal.

I do feel a bit worried for the parents of the child I heard the doctor call someone over to see because it was an "interesting" case.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aw. My baby has a heart murmur too! However, I can not afford the EKG to find out if her's is 'innocent' or not.

Kristin said...

Yikes. I remember when Rowan had a chest X-ray for his reflux and it showed an enlarged heart. And I remember the pediatrician showing up on our doorstep that evening to deliver the news (tell me that isn't a really bad sign). Happy ending, though. Just a bad X-ray. But doing an ultrasound on an infant isn't easy....